Shing-a-ling said everything
Updated: Jul 16
Chapter One says to love her, you love her with all your heart.
Chapter Two you tell her, you’re never, never, never, never, never gonna part.
In Chapter Three remember, the meaning of romance.
In Chapter Four you break up, but you give her just one more chance.
— Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp )
Earl Fowler
I’d like to thank the guy who wrote the song that made my baby fall in love with me. Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe.
But where do I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be? The sweet love story that is older than the sea? How … can I tell … you about … my loved one? How … can I tell … you about … my loved one?
Why should I feel the way I do? Why am I so shy when I’m beside you? What’s love got to do with it?
Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop? Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?
Well, I wonder, wonder who, mbadoo-ooh, who wrote The Book of Love?
And it turns out I’m not the only one. Legendary French pop ensemble Voltaire et Les Garçons de la Plage were surely onto something in suggesting that we should judge people by the questions they ask rather than the answers they give. That goes double for songs, which, when you think about it, certainly pose an awful lot of head scratchers:
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? Who knows where the time goes? For that matter, does anybody really know what time it is?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
But what I want to focus on here is the Big Conundrum. “Is this love? Is this love? Is this love? Is this love that I’m feeling?” comes with a hormonal flush and an adrenalin rush impossible to replicate in any other human endeavour: “You ask her if she loves you. She answers I do. Your heart starts glowing inside.”
Hey, nonny, ding dong, alang alang alang
Boom ba-doh, ba-doo ba-doodle-ayy
Oh, life could be a dream (sh-boom, sh-boom)
If I could take you up in paradise up above (You, you, sh-boom, sh-boom)
If you would tell me I’m the only one that you love (You, you, sh-boom, sh-boom).
Sadly, when our ardour goes unrequited, life can also be a nightmare. Everybody plays the fool, there’s no exception to the rule. So sometimes love is a losing game. Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks. And if you care, don’t let them see. Don’t give yourself away.
In short, will I see you in September or lose you to a summer love?
And I wonder
I wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder
Why
Why, why, why, why, why she ran away
And I wonder
A-where she will stay-ay
My little runaway
A-run, run, run, run, runaway.
I know of a fool, you see. For that fool is me.
So here’s a question for that Gypsy with the gold-capped tooth (she’s got a pad down on Thirty-fourth and Vine): Is music truly the food of love? Maybe Shakespeare’s Duke Orsino, sick of being lovesick, had the wrong end of the stick in Twelfth Night?
In search of an answer to this rhythmic riddle — a refrain, wrapped in a bridge, inside a verse — I’ve pulled together some lists of inquisitive songs from a bunch of different genres and demonstrated musicologically — with a margin of error somewhere between “How Deep Is Your Love?” and the square root of “Do You Believe in Life After Love?” — that so far as creative impulses go, love be the food of music. Play on.
If the band slows down, we’ll yell for more. Da doo ron-ron-ron, Da doo ron-ron!
Doo Wop
Why Do Fools Fall in Love? - Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers
Devil or Angel? - The Clovers
Do You Love Me? - The Contours
Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)? - Barry Mann
Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love? - Dion and The Belmonts
Have You Heard? - The Duprees
Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)? - The Penguins
Could This Be Magic? - The Dubs
What’s Your Name? - Don & Juan
Who Wrote the Book of Love? - The Monotones
This survey will be in no way comprehensive and I’m sure you could come up with some better examples than those here on offer, pretty much off the top of my head. But the point is, some people want to fill the world with silly love songs.
And what’s wrong with that? I need to know. Either that or find gainful employment instead of wasting everyone’s time on this nonsense for sentimental reasons:
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, ahh-do
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, ahh-do
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, ahh-do
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na
Ahh, yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip
Mum-mum-mum-mum-mum-mum, get a job
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na …
Can it be that it was all so simple then or has time rewritten every line?
• • •
By the time Motown and rock’n’roll evolved out of a stew of jazz, blues, gospel and soul, thanks in no small measure to the creation of the Fender bass that could now be paired with the electric guitar, musical questions got a little more adventurous.
Hey Momma! Is it true what they say, that Papa never worked a day in his life? What’s going on? Isn’t life strange? Are you experienced?
In some ways, the pivot away from the lighter, how-much-is-that-doggie-in-the-window? pop music of the Fifties toward the more jaded, often ironic approach of the Sixties parallels the transition in American musical theatre from the lyrics of an Oscar Hammerstein, say, to that of a protégé like Stephen Sondheim. Less corniness, more grit.
But when we got that feeling, we still wanted sexual healing. Ain’t that peculiar?
Motown
Where Did Our Love Go? - The Supremes
Who’s Lovin’ You? - The Jackson 5
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted? - Jimmy Ruffin
Who’s Zoomin’ Who? - Aretha Franklin
Do You Love Me? - The Contours
Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)? - The Supremes
Can I Get a Witness? - Marvin Gaye
Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)? - Frank Wilson
Who’s Gonna Take the Blame? - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
Who’s Making Love? - Johnnie Taylor
Where Did You Go? - The Temptations
Who Can I Run To? - The Supremes
Do You Really Love Your Baby? - The Jackson 5
How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone? - Diana Ross & The Supremes
What About Me? - The Temptations
Can I Change My Mind? - Tyrone Davis
Ain’t nothing like the real thing. You’re all I need to get by. A wop bop a loo bop a lop ba ba!
• • •
Perhaps mindful of Timothy Leary’s admonition to question authority, but more likely because one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, the queries posed by rock, folk and pop artists in the 1960s and beyond tended to be more varied, exigent and introspective than swinging on a star with a waggly tail. Romance still topped the charts, though, even while we pondered what was so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding.
How long has this been going on? Do you really want to hurt me? Why can’t we be friends? Can anybody find me somebody to love? How will I know?
Rock’n’Roll
Do You Want to Know a Secret? - The Beatles
How Can I Tell You? - Cat Stevens
Is This Love? - Whitesnake
Are You Gonna Be My Girl? - Jet
Who Do You Love? - George Thorogood & The Destroyers
Do You Love Me? - Kiss
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? - The Beatles
Have You Ever Loved a Woman? - Derek and the Dominos
Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman? - Bryan Adams
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? - The Shirelles
Tell me, what’d I say? Are you going away with no word of farewell? Will there be not a trace left behind? Are you somewhere up above and am I still your own true love?
• • •
I got no kick against the next genre unless they try to play it too darn fast and lose the beauty of the melody until it’s sounding like a symphony. For it’s fair to say that no other musical form interrogates defectors from what sometime practitioner Joni Mitchell calls “the petty wars that shell-shock love away” with the nuanced emotional depth of …
Jazz
What Is This Thing Called Love? - Cole Porter
Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby? - Louis Jordan
How Deep Is the Ocean? - Diana Krall (by way of Irving Berlin)
What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life? - Michel Legrand
Have You Met Miss Jones? - Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
Ain’t That a Kick in the Head? - Dean Martin
Why Don’t You Do Right? - Peggy Lee
What Is There to Say? - Vernon Duke and Yip Warburg
Isn’t It a Pity? - George and Ira Gershwin
What’s Your Story, Morning Glory? - Mary Lou Williams
Shall We Dance? - George and Ira Gershwin
Love flew in through my window. I was so happy then. But after love had stayed a little while, love flew out again. How high is the sky?
• • •
The wry levity of country music songwriters comes through in what reads below like an overheard conversation at honky-tonk nightclub, laced with whispered sweet nothings over a couple of whiskey sours (or maybe a bit of Willie Nelson in a pickup truck).
Country
How Do You Like Me Now? - Toby Keith
Why Not Me? - The Judds
Do You Want Fries with That? - Tim McGraw
Where’ve You Been? - Kathy Mattea
Is There Life Out There? - Reba McEntire
Would You Go with Me? - Josh Turner
Are You Lonesome Tonight? - Elvis Presley
Who’s Cheatin’ Who? - Alan Jackson
What Was I Thinkin’? - Dierks Bentley
Why Don’t We Just Dance? - Josh Turner
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? - Hank Williams
Where Do I Fit in the Picture? - Clay Walker
Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That? - Dolly Parton
Do I? - Luke Bryan
Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)? - Tanya Tucker
Are you sure Hank done it this way? Where have all the cowboys gone? Who’s gonna fill their shoes? Will the circle be unbroken?
• • •
[TEVYE, spoken]
Well?
[GOLDE]
For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him
Fought with him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that’s not love, what is?
[TEVYE]
Then you love me!
[GOLDE, spoken]
I suppose I do.
[TEVYE]
And I suppose I love you, too.
[GOLDE & TEVYE]
It doesn’t change a thing
But even so
After twenty-five years
It’s nice to know. So give my regards to …
Broadway
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? - The Sound of Music
Shall We Dance? - The King and I
What I Did for Love? - A Chorus Line
Do You Love Me? - Fiddler on the Roof
What Is This Feeling? - Wicked
Where Is Love? - Oliver!
Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful? - Cinderella
Can You Feel the Love Tonight? - The Lion King
What Would I Do If I Could Feel? - The Wiz
How Are Things in Glocca Morra? - Finian’s Rainbow
Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)? - The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd
Kiss today goodbye. The sweetness and the sorrow. Wish me luck, the same to you. But I can’t regret what the musicals did for love. It’s enough to make kings and vagabonds believe the very best.
• • •
Every morning, every evening. Ain’t we got fun? Not much money. Oh, but honey. Ain’t we got romantic dilemmas aplenty in the loosely defined canon of significant 20th-century standards collectively known as the …
Great American Songbook
Ain’t We Got Fun? - Richard A. Whiting, Gus Kahn, Raymond B. Egan
Isn’t It Romantic? - Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
What’s New? - Bob Haggart and Johnny Burke
Who’s Sorry Now? - Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Ted Snyder
What Can I Say After I Say I’m Sorry? - Walter Donaldson, Abe Lyman
Will You Still Be Mine? - Kenny Burrell
Has Anybody Seen My Gal? - Ray Henderson, Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young
What’ll I Do? - Irving Berlin
What Kind of Fool Am I? - Irving Caesar, Sammy Lerner, Gerald Marks
Why Did I Choose You? - Michael Leonard and Herbert Martin
Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. People will say we’re in love. (And yeah, before you ask, I know a bunch of the songs included under the equally loosely defined jazz section above more properly belong here. But as Miles used to play, So What?)
• • •
Now, it has to be admitted that beginning the beguine doesn’t cut quite as much ice in some other musical genres.
Hip hop, which I’m boycotting partly because it contains some hateful lines about women and mostly because I’m an old white guy with no gold-capped teeth, is focused more on such issues as police brutality, racial inequality and gangsta bling than on lovey-dovey, moony-Juney-spoony stuff.
Classical music, meanwhile, is primarily instrumental. It would seem that we’ve come to the tuning fork in the road.
But still, there are some vocal works (operas, oratorios, art songs, etc.) that contain such baffling posers as “What shall I do without Eurydice?” (Orfeo ed Euridice by C.W. Gluck) and “What’s opera, Doc?” (by R. Wagner and E. Fudd).
My Grade 9 German is a little rusty, but I believe Carl Maria von Weber’s always hummable “Was gleicht wohl auf Erden dem Jägervergnügen?” roughly translates to the familiar libretto refrain: Kill the wabbit, kill the rabbit!
Titillated by the 1964 obituary of Alma Mahler-Werfel, an Austrian composer and socialite who rang up three famous husbands (composer Gustav Mahler, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and novelist Franz Werfel), mathematically inclined satirist Tom Lehrer eagerly put his finger on the beating heart of dem Weltgetümme with this earnest entreaty:
Alma, tell us
All modern women are jealous
Which of your magical wands
Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?
• • •
And finally. Just to underscore that songs raising questions about flings, flirtation and fascination aren’t a frivolous, exclusively Western fantasy, here are some translations of song titles from Hindi cinema (compiled with the help of my in-house expert). More proof, if any were needed, that Perry Como had it right. Love does makes the world go ’round.
Bollywood
Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai? (Am I in Love?) - Woh Lamhe (2006)
Tum Paas Aaye Kyun? (Why Did You Come Near?) - Hum Tum (2004)
Kya Hua Tera Wada? (What Happened To Your Vows?) - Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977)
Aap Jaisa Koi? (Someone Like You?) - Qurbani (1980)
Hum Tum Ek Kamre Mein Band Ho? (Can You and I Be in the Same Room?) - Bobby (1973)
Mera Mann Kyon Tumhe Chaahe? (Why Do I Want You?) - Manzil (1979)
Tumne Kabhi Kisi Se Pyaar Kiya? (Have You Ever Loved Anyone?) - Tum Bin (2001)
Dil Dhadakne Do? (Let The Heart Beat?) - Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)
Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai? (Is This What You Call Love?) - Rocky (1981)
Haan Mujhe Pyaar Hua Allah Miya? (My God, Have I Fallen in Love?) - Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004)
Your pulse will beat and your heart will pound. ’Cause no matter where you are, love makes the world go ’round.
• • •
Outro
Oh, those sweet old love songs. Every word rings true.
Sham-a-ling-dong-ding means sweetheart
Sham-a-ling-dang-dong does too
And it means that right here in my arms
That's where you belong
And it means sham-a-ling-dong-ding
Sham-a-ling-dang-dong.
You and I knew all the words and we always sang along to “O sham-a-ling-dong-ding, sham-a-ling-dang-dong.” And no one sang more sweetly than the late, great Jesse Winchester. Come shed a tear with Neko Case and me:
Brilliant, Earl, but you left out the Keith Richards classic, All About You:
Though the laughs may be cheap
That's just 'cause the joke's about you
I'm so sick and tired hanging around with dogs like you
You're the first to get blamed
Always the last bitch to get paid